V. Another Plain-style Mexica Song
With naught but songs
Can we curb our dark passions—
Our only vestments flowers
There in your abode, my God.
Indeed this feast of mine
Will finally be destroyed,
My friendships lost as well
Once I, Yohyontzin, have departed
For that realm of song,
The demesne of the Giver of Life.
Let the turquoise heron flowers
Appear to twist on the wind
Like bright trogons—
You, King Nezahualcoyotl,
Wrap yourself round
With dead, desiccated blooms.
Likewise, O princes,
O eagle warriors,
O jaguar knights,
May your hearts grasp truth:
Not forever are we friends—
A mere moment here on earth,
Then all depart for His home.
Yet your fame will not fade,
My beloved lord, Tezozomoc—
For this is your elegy.
I weep these words,
I grieve like an orphan bereft . . .
You have departed for His home.
Therefore do I groan,
I grieve like an orphan bereft . . .
Nevermore, not ever again
Will I return to behold you
Upon this earth—
You have departed for His home.
VI. Another Song in the Chalcan Style
composed by Tētlepanquetzanitzin
Lord of the Waters, god and friend,
I weep with anguish at your side.
How much pity can your vassal
Wring from your heart
Here in the sea-ringed world?
I beg you to descend
And bear the earth upon your back
If only for a day.
If only you had created nothing,
You who are my heart . . .
Is this how one comes to live
In that proud land Beyond:
Feeling fury toward nothing,
Hating no one,
Living on this earth with honor?
I weep, for my heart knows,
Sacred friend,
That very truly,
Without a doubt,
As they live on the earth,
My brothers will grow lax.
Look to the south
And east, the rising place
Of our Lord the Sun!
Let your soul take flight
Where battle spreads—
Deluge and conflagration.
There one seizes power,
Kingship, holy blooms.
Not in vain will you strive
For the quetzal-feather tassels:
With blade and buckler
On the battlefields of earth
You will earn the holy blooms
For which you yearn,
For which you pine—
Flowers bestowed on you,
Prepared for you
By the Lord of the Near and the Nigh.
Vainly do you covet
That which you seek:
How can you seize the holy blooms
Unless you take up arms?
With your chest and your sweat
You will win those sacred flowers—
For your tears of pain and battle cry
The Lord of the Near and the Nigh
Will grant you your desire.
from Songs of Mexico
Various Aztec Authors
translated from the Náhuatl by David Bowles
Listen to song V. read in the original Nahuatl by David Bowles:
The codex known as Cantares Mexicanos (Songs of Mexico) is the larger of the two surviving collections of Aztec cuīcatl (songs). It consists of eight-five folios on which ninety-one cuīcatl were compiled in Nahuatl using Roman script somewhere around 1585. The cuīcatl range widely in genre, from ecstatic hymns celebrating humanity’s reciprocal relationship with heaven to historical ballads, bawdy satire, and philosophical musings. Most, however, are meant to accompany nehtōtiliztli or ritual dances. The two pieces I have translated were intended to promote war, each its own way. Song V is arguably a xōpancuīcatl or song of spring, a genre in which the good things in life are celebrated while their fleeting nature and the greater bliss of the afterlife is stressed. The emotional agony of mourning the ephemeral and longing for the eternal is a key feature of such verse. Song VI expresses a more matter-of-fact rejection of the pleasures of this world, calling men to arms. Both were meant to be performed in the plain or straight style, which may mean that warriors marched to the song on their way to battle. Few translations of these poems exist in English. D. B. Brinton contributed versions in 1890. John Bierhorst’s scholarly rendering of the entire codex into English in 1985 includes more dynamic prose versions, but these stirred controversy among the community of Nahuatl scholars for their imposition of the North American indigenous Ghost Dance tradition onto pre-conquest Mesoamerican verse. For the majority of surviving cuīcatl, there is still a need for a poet to craft versions that appeal to a modern reader, attempting to recreate with the tools of modern verse the feel and impact of the originals. As in my collection Flower, Song, Dance, I have endeavored to accomplish this task in the translations presented here.
Various Aztec Authors composed the songs included in the codex known as Cantares Mexicanos (Songs of Mexico). The identity of the composer of song V is unknown: as with many of the pieces in the codex, s/he is assumed to be an anonymous philosopher-poet of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Song VI, however, was purportedly written by Tētlepanquetzanitzin, a ruler of the city-state Tlacopan who died during the Spanish Conquest.
David Bowles is a resident of deep South Texas and has taught at the University of Texas since 1997. Drawn to the culture and history of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, he focuses on the study of indigenous philosophy, mythology, and legend through primary sources. In 2014, the Texas Institute of Letters awarded his book Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation. Bowles is the author of several other titles, most significantly the Pura Belpré Honor Book The Smoking Mirror. Translations by Bowles have appeared in Translation Review, Metamorphoses, Rattle, Axolotl, Huizache, Somos en escrito, BorderSenses, Eye to the Telescope, and Parabola.
